Integrity, integrated

Two interesting trends in the public relations reinforce and strengthen each other, although on the surface they may seem, well, somewhat segregated. The first trend is customers and market forces combining to promote tech-savvy, multifaceted, fully integrated, digital PR campaigns that synch messages across platforms both online and old-school, to optimize KPI and ROI.

The other trend is for greater integrity. Following Nike’s “Believe in something” campaign featuring currently unemployed quarterback Colin Kaepernick, whose well-known position against racism may have helped cost him a starting position in the NFL, sales for the iconic sports manufacturer shot up by six billion dollars. But when Gillette tried something similar, reimagining its “The Best a Man Can Get” tagline as “The Best Men Can Be” with an accompanying video in order to encourage men to be less sexist, the results were mixed. The video accompanying the new messaging turned off more many traditional customers and didn’t result of much of a sales bump. Although intentions may be noble, the bottom line in risky campaigns that come off as preachy might be to take Nike’s classic advice to “just do it”.

Worse still are off-message messages in Twitter storms from the likes of Tesla’s Elon Musk that go far and wide thanks to the well-integrated nature of communications today, but go down strangely in terms of integrity. Have something nice to say. And if you must be provocative, it pays to rebel with style, not with words that may come back to haunt you and your company’s reputation and value.